February 2023 Prayer Letter

Written by Karl Dahlfred on 08 February 2023.

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Dear Family and Friends,

I want to share with you the good news that we are making progress getting back to the mission field.

Financial Support News

In the past few months, we’ve seen an increase of financial support of +/- $500/month through a handful of new mission partners as well as a number of kind year-end donations in December (thank you!). I’ve been busy reaching out to churches and I think we have a few promising leads for new church partners, but nothing firm yet. I do have, however, a couple of verbal commitments from people who want to start giving regularly when we leave for the field. For planning purposes, that is really helpful for us because we can say to OMF how much will be coming in towards our budget and thus get the thumbs up to depart for Thailand. Please continue to pray for us that full support may be reached (or at least pledged) in the near future so that we can return to Thailand this coming summer.

Chiang Mai Theological Seminary

We have been in communication with OMF Thailand field leadership and are pleased to share that we have been officially designated to NorthernThailand where I will teach at Chiang Mai Theological Seminary (CTS). CTS was started about 20 years ago by OMF missionary Larry Dinkins and now has a small faculty of Thai and missionary professors and about 150 students. I am excited about the opportunity to jump back into teaching and training Thai Christians who will serving as pastors, evangelists, Sunday school teachers, missionaries, and more. My exact responsibilities and course assignments will be worked out later but it is likely that I will get to teach church history and historical theology. I love church history. This spring at our church in Florida, the associate pastor and I are tag team teaching a Sunday school series on church history (listen here). And I am also writing an article on 20^th century Thai evangelist Boon Mark Gittisarn that will be published later this year. There is so much to learn from the past when we view it through the lens of Scripture. I am thankful that the Lord seems to be opening an opportunity to be in the classroom with Thai believers once again to see what we can learn from the past to apply to serving the Lord today.

Visa Applications

Besides financial support, the other big thing we need to get back to Thailand is visas. I am starting to gather documents and fill our forms so that the OMF office in Bangkok can submit applications for a missionary visa (for Karl) and dependent visas (for the rest of the family). Currently, it takes about 5 months for the visa application to be processed and approved, and after the visas are granted there is a window of time in which you need to enter the country for the visa to remain valid. As such, OMF wants some assurance that we’ll be at 100% financial support by the time the visa is approved. Please pray with us that we’ll get to 100% in the near future and that there will not be undue delay in applying for and receiving visas so that we can go to the field this summer, Lord willing.

Thanks for praying for us, and with us, on behalf of the Thai people. Soli Deo Gloria.

By Christ’s grace,

Karl & Sun Dahlfred